No fancy renders. Will do when I finish for sure.

Almost done with the basic modeling. After I clean up the geometry and optimize it should be around 11,000 polys -- comparable to the Tiger.

Although it is a WIP, comments are welcome. If I finish this, it will be the first model I have created all the way to completion. I may need help along the way. :o

Good work, I really enjoy to see a panther in dod:source, probably the best WWII tank.

If you want some pictures of panther (to help for graphics design) that I took from a tank/panzer museum in france :

- picture1 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20050-PantherG.jpg)
- picture2 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20051-PantherG.jpg)
- picture3 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20101-PantherG.jpg)
- picture4 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20102-PantherG.jpg)
- picture5 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20103-MG42%20surPanther.jpg)
- picture6 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20186-PantherG.jpg)
- picture7 (http://panteror.free.fr/divers/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s/Mus%e9e%20des%20Blind%e9s%20(Saumur)%20187-PantherG.jpg)

Good work.

good work so far. looks very cool :)

Hey bazooka, can I share a few tricks for making really efficient LOD levels for a tanks running gear?

For LOD0, you need to model the actually bogey wheels in detail so thats going to chew up a lot of polys.

However, when you get to a LOD metric of about 30-35 You can probably just use a flat, 2D square with a transparent texture of the front/rear drive wheels. Better still, you can do the same for the individual wheels when your LOD metric gets to about 50+. If you wanna go really nuts, you can replace the entire running gear with just a flat polygon filling the space in the tracks with a texture of the entire bogey array.

For the best effect you should save space on your texture UV for them and render the actuall textures your going to put on them from your LOD0 model.

I did something similar back in the dat for the Goldsrc Kubelwagen wheels and on my PaK40 (at LOD metric 50 it replaces the modelled wheel hub with flat disk with a texture )

nice work bazooka, can't wait till this bad boy is released :)

Yes, please do finish, I can't wait to see the product of your work. :D

If you get this finished, you have no idea how useful that'll become!

If you want some pictures of panther (to help for graphics design) that I took from a tank/panzer museum in france :

Thanks, some good shots in there.

Hey bazooka, can I share a few tricks for making really efficient LOD levels for a tanks running gear?

Excellent idea! Only part I'm not sure of is how to render the texture from the LOD0 model...at least I'm not sure of a good way. Thanks for the help. :)

nice work bazooka, can't wait till this bad boy is released :)

I'm working as fast as I can, which is pretty slow, but I'm learning more efficient techniques as I go along. The UV map will probably take me a long time, as I've never UV-mapped before. But I'm mostly worried about the texture. Texturing is an entire field in itself, and I have not ventured into it at all. I would like to learn, but I may try to employ some help for this particular project.

Excellent idea! Only part I'm not sure of is how to render the texture from the LOD0 model...at least I'm not sure of a good way. Thanks for the help. :)

Well the simply way would be to make and texture LOD0 then just render it out of your 3D app on sideways view. Then cut out the bits you need from that and put them on your texture.

I was just thinking that if you've got the time, maybe you could make some alternative versions of the tank also like whats listed below.


1 Version with track guards (Sheilds) on the sides
1 Version where the turret is seperate from the body so mappers can choose which was to have it facing
1 Version with damaged tracks
1 Version with the tank destroyed


Some of that should be easy enough to accomplish without to much work hopefully :)

Hopefully. :) The skirt armor should be easy and I'll make the turret separate by default unless there's a good reason not to that I'm not aware of. Damaged/destroyed might be harder.

Well the simply way would be to make and texture LOD0 then just render it out of your 3D app on sideways view. Then cut out the bits you need from that and put them on your texture.

Okay, I was just thinking that the lighting would have an impact on the texture color/intensity, but I guess you just tweak it until the render matches the original.

how is this coming along?

Modeling is done, UV mapping should commence shortly. Haven't had a ton of time (and a ton is how much I need) -- working overtime + other obligations/priorities. And now TF2 might be interrupting me now and then as well... ;)

I'll try to post some renders, just as soon as I learn how to make one properly.

thats kewl to hear :)

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been playing an embarrassing amount of TF2 lately. :o

Here are some renders. Didn't really know what I was doing frankly, and I couldn't get them to look the way I wanted, but I think they turned out...passable. :) Renders show the version with skirt armor. Will make a version without it as well.



The model turned out to be about 11,300 polys. That's compared to around 10,750 on Valve's Tiger tank. So not too bad.

I'll probably be pretty slow-going getting this thing done, but it will happen. It's kind of a learning tool for me more than anything, hence I'm not too concerned about getting it out the door, especially because someone else has a Panther in the works. Of course I hope someone ends up using mine anyway. I do want to texture it I decided, so learning some texturing skills is going to be the main hurdle.

As always, crits welcome. :)

Nice!

The "wheels" (this is where the gaping holes in my military/vehicle vocabulary become apparent) might dip too much into the track. Also (left circle on the pic), you might try to make the track flat - it seems you gave it a bit of a curvature near the edge?



For better critics on models, you might want to post pics of the wireframe. The render sure looks pretty nice though. Keep it up!

Nice!

The "wheels" (this is where the gaping holes in my military/vehicle vocabulary become apparent) might dip too much into the track. Also (left circle on the pic), you might try to make the track flat - it seems you gave it a bit of a curvature near the edge?



For better critics on models, you might want to post pics of the wireframe. The render sure looks pretty nice though. Keep it up!

Thanks for this. I'm glad you pointed those things out. I fixed the wheels dipping into the tracks so much. As for the edge of the tracks, that curvature is actually somewhat correct, although it looks odd with the geometry being simplified I think. That type of track actually does kind of taper towards the edges (Valve's Tiger tank tracks do this too). I'll try to get it to look a little better though.

That type of track actually does kind of taper towards the edges (Valve's Tiger tank tracks do this too).

Oh okay, I wasn't aware of that. :D Looking at some pics, you're right, it does taper a bit.

Good looking model so far Bazooka :)

Can't wait till this baby's ready to be skinned (Give me a buzz if you need a hand skinning it)

Here are some simple shaded w/ wireframe pics. Not sure if they're much help for criticizing...

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/456/panther1cv1.jpg
http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/8189/panther2jb0.jpg
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8346/panther3px6.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9851/panther4zl0.jpg
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/2776/panther5fs5.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4970/panther6to5.jpg

Also, is this UV map okay? I just did the turret part so far. First UV map for me and I tried to use Valve's Tiger as a reference on how to map it. I made it so the texture has uniform resolution across all polygons. I am wondering if I should be using extra UV space for some bits at the cost of mismatching resolution though.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/6103/pantheruvs1tq4.th.png (http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/6103/pantheruvs1tq4.png)


Edit: Just started reading about "ambient occlusion" and I guess I'd have to alter the UVs a bit if I wanted to do that, which I do. But the map would remain basically the same.